Journal of Development Economics · 2024 · Qing Liu、Larry Dongxiao Qiu、Chaoqun Zhan
中文摘要
产品质量被广泛视为经济发展的重要决定因素。本文考察水平型外商直接投资(FDI)究竟是提升还是降低了国内企业出口的质量。我们以中国2002年FDI管制的变动作为中国FDI渗透度的工具变量(IV)来识别因果影响,并引入一个理论模型为实证分析提供理论依据。我们发现,FDI流入对中国企业的出口质量产生了显著的负向影响。这一负向效应的机制在于:FDI加剧了国内市场竞争,从而促使企业内部调整产品组合,并降低了国内企业对新产品质量投资的激励。具体而言,国内企业在淘汰部分现有产品并引入新产品的同时,对新产品的质量投资较少,而对持续生产的产品则维持其原有质量。
Abstract
Product quality is widely regarded as an important determinant for economic development. This paper investigates whether horizontal foreign direct investment (FDI) improves or deteriorates the quality of domestic firms’ exports. We use China’s FDI regulation changes in 2002 as an instrument variable (IV) for FDI penetration in China to identify the causal impact and introduce a theoretical model to rationalize our empirical work. We find that FDI inflows exert a significantly negative effect on Chinese firms’ export quality. The mechanism of the negative effect is that FDI intensifies the domestic market competition, which induces within-firm adjustment of product mix and lowers domestic firms’ incentive to invest in the quality of new products. In particular, while domestic firms drop some existing products and introduce new products, they invest less in the quality of new products and maintain the quality of continuing products.